MTV India Launches Video Show On Vine: Pick Me Up

This is probably a first for an Indian media company: MTV India has started creating videos on Vine, the video platform from Twitter, for its show for ‘Pick Me Up’. Vine allows users only six second videos, which are not necessarily a continuous shot. The MTV India Vine page has three Vine episodes of Pick me up, featuring VJ José Covaco, telling you how or how not to pick up women. “Shooting for Vine is very difficult,” Ekalavya Bhattacharya, Digital Head at MTV India told MediaNama. “It took us 18 hours to shoot the first Vine video, and around 24 hours (in all) to shoot the first three videos. One small mistake or one tiny frame out of sync, and we had to do the whole thing all over again. We didn’t want to do simple look-at-the-camera videos.”

Recording on Vine is touch-based: the recording continues as long as you are touching the screen, up to a maximum of six seconds. To record multiple frames, you can touch the screen for a couple of seconds to record, switch to the next shot and then again touch the screen to record a few more seconds. It might not sound like much, but you can tell a story in six seconds – for example: here’s one I did about a private theater in Hauz Khas, and another about graffiti on my way to that theater. As you can see, it’s more like an animated gif. My videos are a little shaky, but for a brand, it needs to be look professional.

This is why MTV’s first Vine took so long: “If you see the videos, Jose is first dressed up as one person, then another person. You shoot two seconds, and then he has to change, then shoot another two seconds and change again. He had to get it right every time. All three frames have to be exactly in sync and in exactly six seconds. It’s not like an instagram video where you can upload a video,” Bhattacharya said.

MTV is also looking at this as a platform for brands. “We’re using this as an experience to learn how to use the platform, and as a place where we can maybe get a brand on board. Not only is it social by design, but also money making by design. Lots of brands are trying to crack Vine, and we can do content which is fun and viral. We have to figure out how to convert this content into branded content, so we can bring brands like (for example) Durex on board.”